


Trapped Invaders and Defenders

by VioletThePorama



Category: Homestuck, Invader Zim
Genre: Angst, Blood and Violence, Dib & Zim Friendship (Invader Zim), Dib Being Creepy (Invader Zim), Frenemies, Gaz being the most competent, Gen, Happy Ending, He comes back, Homestuck References, Implied/Referenced Character Death, No Homestuck characters, Post-Invader Zim: Enter the Florpus, SBURB (Homestuck), ZADF, Zim Being an Idiot (Invader Zim)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-27
Updated: 2020-05-03
Packaged: 2021-03-02 04:40:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,923
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23869174
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/VioletThePorama/pseuds/VioletThePorama
Summary: Dib and co. play Sburb.
Relationships: Dib & Zim (Invader Zim)
Comments: 2
Kudos: 12





	1. Being Dib Is Hard And Nobody Understands

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to samandmaxiscool (tumblr) and Samandmaxarecool (ao3) for beta reading. You should go read their stuff!
> 
> Basically, I've been reading way too much Homestuck since 413. 
> 
> Their Classpects are as follows:  
> Zim: Prospit - Prince of life  
> Dib: Derse - Mage of light  
> Gaz: Prospit - Knight of mind  
> Gir: Prospit - Heir of hope  
> Skooge: Derse - Witch of heart  
> Tak: Derse - Thief Of time
> 
> If anybody has any input on these, I'd love to hear it.

Dib found himself on Zim’s planet, driven by boredom and curiosity. He had seen everybody’s planet by then, but had spent the briefest amount of time on Zim’s, having barreled through the rotation of worlds to get to his sister’s.

He had checked on her, much to Gaz’s disdain, and had pretty quickly been forced out of her world and back to his own, where he poured over the planet's lore, talking to his consorts and dragging out every scrap of information Dadbotsprite had in his databases. He felt fairly confident about what he was supposed to do for the quest, but was so absorbed in the idea of it that he hadn’t even thought about what the invader might have been up to. 

So Dib was back, setting foot on the corroded ground of Rust and Circuitry. He kept an eye out for Zim, eyeing the shadows, a favorite hiding place of Zim’s. Then, he carefully edged towards the portal to the illuminated base. The occasional imp wandered about, features warped by unnervingly wide plastic eyes, and skin like melting ice cream. Dib stepped aside, back against the nearest structured pile of scrap metal, ignoring how the reddish rust of the lands namesake rubbed off against his coat. An imp walked past him, and he continued on, keeping a careful watch out for ogres. 

Unfortunately, as Dib was turning to avoid catching the attention of an imp, he stumbled back into another. He grunted as it hit him, and he turned, catching the poor thing with a laser-dagger that Gaz had lent him. The imp burst into grist, and Dib dutifully collected it before continuing on, trying to avoid the ire of any others. 

While the weapons were really cool to use, it made Dib feel a bit twisted inside. None of the imps or other violent game constructs really seemed all that sentient. It wasn’t like fighting Zim, who fought him punch by punch, on equal ground. 

Speaking of Zim, Dib needed to find where he was. He still wanted to find out if the Alien-Sleeping-Bat he had created actually worked. So he entered the portal from Zim’s world up to his house, and took on the task of getting through the yard. 

Dib had memorized the paths of the gnomes lasers, and their blind-spots years ago, but he still took a moment to glance over the set-up, and wince as an Imp wandered it’s way into the yard, and was immediately vaporized. 

Then Dib leapt into the yard from atop the fence, breaking out into a full-on sprint to get to the door. He rang the doorbell, trying not to wonder how everybody’s electricity still worked as he was allowed inside by Gir, who was dressed in an outrageously yellow outfit with a long, trailing windsock behind him. 

“Hi Mary!” Gir piped up, and giggled as Dib stepped inside, wearily glancing back at the gnomes. 

“Hey… Gir. What’s with the outfit?”

“Found it,” Gir said noncommittally, and returned to the couch to stare blankly at static. 

Dib hesitated, standing around for a while before continuing on to try and find Zim. 

The irken was down in the underground labs, somehow still intact with the rest of the house. Dib found him in the main room, standing frozen by some blueprints. He only reacted when Dib called his name, one of the aliens' antenna twitching to the side before Zim’s eye’s fell on him.

“ _ Human _ ,” Zim hissed. His next sentence went up an octave. “What are you doing in Zim’s base?”

“Gir let me in,” Dib shrugged, and then pointed at him. “What have you been planning,  _ Space-boy _ ? World domination? Destruction? A way to get us out of here? World domination???”

“I’m already the ruler of this planet,” Zim waved off, unconcerned. “And it’s much better than the Dib-smellies Earth.”

“You take that back! You were liking Earth before we ended up here. Plus… this planet kind of sucks.”

“Liking, tolerating, ruling,” Zim looked back at the blueprints, disregarding Dib. “I see no difference. And this planet rather reminds me of Irk. It has no ‘suck’.”

“Huh!” Dib scoffed, and approached, trying to get a glance at what was on the papers, but Zim covered and stuffed them into his Pak in record time. “So they  _ are _ for world domination!”

“Eh?” Zim turned, shoving at him. “They are for a communication device, mud person.”

“Likely story,” Dib grumbled, but backed off. He wanted to get in touch with the people of Earth just as much as Zim probably wanted to get in touch with his leaders. He doubted that the communication device had been all Zim was working on, but the alien seemed to be in an informative mood, so he let it be for the moment. “Have you talked to Tak? She might be able to help you with that stuff.”

“Zim is not talking to  _ Tak _ ,” Zim spat, antenna pushing forward as his expression screwed up. He tossed a dirty look back at Dib, who laughed awkwardly. He hadn’t talked to Tak either. 

“What about uh… Skoodge? He was living in your basement for a while before this, wasn’t he?”

“Skoodge was never as technologically adept as I,” Zim said, and his antennae relaxed as he preened. 

Dib raised a brow but didn’t contradict him. Then a thought occurred. “Hey wait, if Skoodge was living in your house, how come he has a house in his Medium? I saw it!”

“Gir has one too,” Zim said, and smirked. “Stole the neighbors houses.”

“You  _ Scum _ ,” Dib shouted, tensing again. “When we get back to Earth, you’re giving those houses back!”

Zim barked out a laugh. “You  _ saw _ those meteors, human. You aren’t so dull as to think that they didn’t wipe out all humanity on your filthy little planet. I’ve been to your classes, and I know that less has caused things to-”

Dib rammed himself into Zim, equipping his Alien-Sleeping-Bat. “Take that back!”

Zim turned on him, an odd look on his face. When he offered no more words, Dib launched himself at the alien, firmly in denial of anything that the alien had said. He swung the bat, just as the irkens legs sprouted from his Pak and catapulted him up. Dib stepped back as Zim landed, and with practiced ease, ducked under the first two strikes from the legs, and propelled himself to the side to avoid the next swipe. 

Dib raised the bat and smashed it down on the next Pak leg that came for him, just a tad slow as it pierced the skin of his upper arm as he brought down the hammer. Something in the infused amalgamation of alien hunting gear must have worked like it was intended, because the bat worked surprisingly well, cracking the metal of the leg. 

Zim let out an enraged shout and began attacking Dib in earnest. The human managed to get another hit in on the same leg, but the next one knocked the bat out of Dib’s hands, and just as he was reaching to grab the knife from Gaz, the legs were gone and Zim’s gloved hand punched the center of his chest, sending Dib flying back. The force of the hit left him breathless, and he scrambled for purchase on the knife with urgency, facing Zim as the alien approached. 

He finally got his fingers wrapped around the hilt, but was yanked to the side by his other arm, losing balance. 

“ _ Revolting _ ,” Zim spat, and swung, using Dib’s weight and taller height against him as Dib tried to right himself again, ending up on the floor instead. “You really  _ are _ delusional, aren’t you?”

Zim began to laugh, and Dib got up, keeping low and yanking the knife up to drive into Zim’s thigh while the irken was distracted with his false victory. The weapon entered the skin as easily as cutting butter, and the laugh turned to another screech as the clearish-pink fluid that acted as Zim’s blood dripped down from the wound. 

“I  _ know _ ,” Dib panted. “That there’s a way to get back.”

Zim kicked at him with his free leg, and Dib spitefully pulled the knife out, causing more blood to gush from the incision. The knife had gone deeper than he had expected. The Irken pursued him despite the injury, slamming his knee into Dib’s forehead and stepping on the hand that held the knife while the human was wincing. “Surely you’ve seen the same message boards as I? The other people who played the game the day Earth was destroyed?”

Dib envied the irken for his pain tolerance and stamina. “It’s a very small number of people… compared to the planet's entire population. Nobody knows for sure that  _ everywhere _ was destroyed, just where they lived.”

“There were  _ meteors _ ,” Zim snapped, crushing his fingers with his boot. Dib grunted in pain, and with his other hand, slammed his hand into the alien's leg-injury, digging his nails into the incision until it drew a pained hiss from him. 

“Heading toward our specific houses! Most of them looked pretty small,” He gasped for air, pressing further into the cut as he tried to think germy thoughts against the invader. “-And others I’m sure burned upon entering the atmosphere! My dad was working on something that would help stop them!”

“Well whatever he was doing obviously wasn’t fast enough-  _ would you stop it _ ?” Zim snapped at him when he twisted a finger into the injury, pulling it bigger and trying not to let his mind wander to fascination as his finger touched something besides skin.

“Get off my hand.”

The alien hissed lowly, and slowly eased off of Dib’s hand. The human let go of the knife and drew back, shaking both of his hands and splattering himself with the blood as the punishment for his impulsive actions. 

Zim grumbled and sat on the nearest bench, sitting back as claws emerged from the ceiling to treat and tend to his injury. His Pak glowed faintly as it repaired the arm that Dib had smashed. He stared forward, but his antennae twitched towards the humans movements. Dib always paid them close attention. 

“Do you require any medical assistance?” Zim sighed. Dib took a moment to take stock of his injuries. He would bruise, but surprisingly hadn’t broken anything.

“No, I’m fine. Sorry for the whole cut thing.”

Zim waved it off. “It is smart thinking, for such a primitive creature.”

“Sure,” Dib said, and took a seat. He accepted the cleaning chalk he was offered and went to town on the blood. “... The prize for winning the game is a world. A proper one. It could be Earth.”

He could feel the other’s attention, but Zim didn’t voice the inevitable conclusion Dib would have to draw about that guess. That it could be the wrong world, or that they might not win at all. Instead they sat in silence for a while. Dib zoned out for a while, only coming back to reality with a shocked gasp as he noticed a newly repaired Pak leg by his face. Then he noticed it was holding something. 

The human carefully picked the blueprints out of its grasp, and read over the designs of the communicator Zim was building. 

“... You may have the honor of being Zim’s assistant,” The alien said. 

Dib swallowed and nodded. 

“And once we… get back to Earth,” The alien continued, and Dib tried to ignore the doubt present in his voice. “I will go back to taking it over for My Tallests, and you can ask your Tall Father how he stopped the meteors.”

“... Thanks Zim.”

The irken hummed in response, and Dib got up to spread out the blueprint. 


	2. Princely Shorts

Dib had been splitting his time between studying the lore of the planets so he could complete his quest, and helping out Zim with the device. The irken had theorized that perhaps they could reach Earth with it too, and Dib couldn’t help but focus on that even as he read his jotted down notes, taken with some consorts. 

He messaged Gaz with the findings, an amalgamation of knowledge that he thought she might have been interested in, but she didn’t respond, although he knew she had read it. His sister still answered with an annoyed message for him to stop bothering her when he asked if she was okay, though, so he left it as it was. 

The only thing able to drag him out of his studying session was the strange message he got from one of the irkens who had joined them in the game - Skoodge. Dib had only messaged Skoodge once before, asking about the details of his planet and if he had any knowledge that he himself wasn’t privy to, but the alien hadn’t even left his house yet, so Dib hadn’t bothered since then. 

So to be bothered by him was strange, to say the least. And the contents of the message were even more confusing. 

**‘I have to be quick. Dib human, you should go to Zim’s house. Now.’**

Dib blinked in confusion, not at the nickname that Zim had apparently spread to his fellow species, but at the suggestion to go to Zim’s. 

**‘Why?’**

**‘Is something wrong?’**

Dib waited for a response, chewing on the end of his pencil. What he finally got was enough to send him bolting for the nearest portal. 

**‘Tak is killing him.’**

Dib haphazardly messaged Gaz as he ran, sending out a message about where he was going and that Zim had done something before he pocketed his phone. He didn’t really expect anything back, but she deserved to know, in case she tried going to his planet while he wasn’t there. 

The human got to Zim’s planet in record time, and to his house within minutes. From the edge of the sidewalk that Zim had dragged with him into the game, Dib could see the familiar sight of pink blood, sticking in thick, gluey globs to the sidewalk. He navigated them carefully, but stepped in one anyway, the pile adhering itself to the bottom of his shoe. 

He took the trip through the gnomes quickly, running straight through them, deciding that he could risk his coat now- but it was a moot point, as absolutely none of them went off. 

“Zim?” Dib called as he entered the unlocked house. The inside was even more of a mess. Trails and puddles of blood marked where the fight has been, and the torn off segment of a Pak leg lay uselessly on the floor. It was impossible to tell who it had belonged to. 

Not immediately seeing anybody aboveground, Dib ran for the elevator and made his way through the basement. Sure enough, there was more blood trailing to one of the rooms. 

The skuffle had obviously gone on for way too long, and Dib found himself wondering just how much blood irkens had, or how many irkens were involved. He winced at the charred green chunk of flesh left at the corner, and steeled himself before he turned to see what was in the room. 

It was dark- darker than Zim usually kept it, or maybe the alien just lit it when he was expecting Dib. Regardless, he mumbled for the computer to turn the lights on, and made his way into the room. Then he spotted the short irkens further back.

Skoodge waved him over, and Dib tried not to feel sick as he stepped over an arm with a bone clearly protruding from it. Then he tried to keep any interest from forming at the sight, and ignored how his hands twitched to go see what the bone density was. Instead, he followed the beckoning of the Skoodge, who looked pretty uninjured aside from a scrape on his face. His Pak wasn’t even glowing, which meant that nothing strenuous had been put upon it. 

Zim, however… Dib turned to look over the irken, who lay on his side. His Pak was glowing a bright red. His body was littered with scrapes and bruises, and one particularly bad looking burn where the invader's eye was. Then Zim shifted slightly, and Dib saw the edges of a puncture wound going deep into his stomach and Dib was sure that if there wasn’t so much blood or bandages, he would have been able to see Zim’s organs with the depth of it, and as Zim looked at something past him, he found that the burn was where Zim's eye had  _ been _ . 

Dib swallowed down bile. Zim’s limbs had been wrapped, and Dib counted four of them, which meant that the arm laying on the floor back there was Tak’s. 

Dib looked to Skoodge questioningly as Zim groaned. It was bad, but surely…

“She went for the healing tanks first,” Skoodge confirmed. “Well, actually Tak first went for his dream self.”

Dib nodded slowly. “And your healing tanks?”

“Don’t have any. Tak might, but… I’ve been using everything in Zim’s base. I brought nothing of my own when I was banished.”

Dib filed the information away for later and nodded, turning back to the injured irken. Blood was soaking through the bandages wrapped around his arms, and Skoodge silently moved to pat Zim’s cheek. 

“He’s losing too much blood.”

“Yeah, there’s a lot,” Dib blurted, and immediately felt stupid. “I mean- can we do a blood transfusion?”

“Do you have any idea  _ how _ to do that?” Skoodge asked dryly. 

Dib blinked. Then he sighed. “So is Zim going to…?”

“Probably,” Skoodge said, like it didn't matter. Like he didn’t  _ care _ , and suddenly it all hit Dib at once. The human burst into sobs and sank down over the bench, trying to keep his tears from splashing onto and burning either of the aliens. 

He flinched as his phone began buzzing, realizing that it probably had been for a while. The distraught investigator managed to fish it out and answer it with a choked sob. 

“Hey Gaz,” He gasped, ignoring Skoodges gaze. 

“Get him to the bed,” She said immediately. 

“Huh?” He sniffed. 

“Who else is there?” Gaz demanded. 

Dib blinked, the despair of losing his- of losing  _ Zim _ too heavy in his mind. He sluggishly tried to understand her words, and slowly complied with her next demand, handing his phone over to Skoodge. 

They talked for a bit while Dib stared at Zim, eyes occasionally clouding over with more tears. He focused on how the aliens chest rose and fell, just like a human’s might have. He ignored how the breaths seemed ragged and shallow, and that with every inhale, Zim winced and his antennae twitched like they wanted to press down, even though they were already plastered to his skull. At least, he tried to ignore those things.

At some point, Gir had found his way through the gore, and had climbed up next to Dib so he could cuddle up next to him and ask why his master was trying to sleep. 

He jumped at the feeling of a hand grabbing his wrist. “Zim!?!” Dib looked up at the body, but zim hadn’t moved since Dib had surveyed his injuries. The hand on his wrist was Skoodge, looking concerned but strangely hopeful. 

“Your littermate says there’s a bed somewhere that could help him. A game construct.”

Dib tried to parse the words into something that made sense, and came up with nothing. Gir seemed to know what they meant, though.

“I saw a bed!” The robot shrieked, eager to be helpful. “I sleeped in them all!”

Dib swallowed, throat dry and hoarse. He was starting to understand. “Can you show us where?”

“It’s a secret,” Gir said, and looked back at Zim. “Follow me!”

Dib nodded and stood, carefully picking Zim up. He tried to keep him as still as possible as he hurried after Gir, trusting that Skoodge would follow, because if they ran into Tak or any enemies, Dib was going to be no help. 

But Gir was taking a long time to lead them, even as he rocketed in a direction in Zim’s world. Zim didn’t have that kind of time. 

Maybe ten minutes into the journey, Zim stirred again, and Dib slowed down a hair to watch him. 

“... Dib human?” The irken croaked, a fist curling itself in his shirt. Dib hadn’t even noticed that one of his gloves was missing. “Why are…”

“We’re going to heal you,” Dib told him. 

Zim laughed weakly, and Dib glanced down long enough to see a trail of blood bubble out and drip from his mouth. “I need no help.”

Dib murmured his agreement and kept following the robot. Skoodge was still following them, a bit further back and still on his phone, but Dib was pretty sure he could tell that Zim was awake. 

“I took her arm,” Zim gurgled. “I took her  _ time _ .”

Dib jerked a bit, reminded of Tak’s title. Then he continued on, trying not to think about it too much yet. He needed to focus, he needed to-

“Sing… to Zim.”

Dib looked down at him, stumbling a bit as his foot hit a pile of metal. He went to ask why, but the irken gave him a dazed and out of it one eyed stare. So the human nodded, and tried to think of a song. 

When he couldn’t think of anything, scrambling for the last few rational thoughts he could reach, he began to hum. 

Dib felt crazy, and laughed hysterically, interrupting the humming as he tried to conceptualize what he was doing. There was a weak pull at his shirt, and he began humming again. Whatever he could think of. He made up a song and hummed it, just to get the tune out there as he held the irken against his chest. 

The human hummed as the alien went still, and he was beginning to go a bit stiff when Gir yelled that they were there. 

Dib burst into a sprint, and stumbled up some slippery-flakey stairs, trying to avoid the wires that lead to the bed. Then he deposited Zim onto the flat surface and stood back. 

“... Your littermate says we should stand back,” Skoodge said. “It’d better work.”

Dib nodded, humming the last few bars of whatever he had concocted, and stepped down the stairs with Skoodge, craning his head to try and get a look at Zim anyway.

Gir moved and pressed against Dib’s leg. “Don’t worry Mary,” The robot comforted. “Master will be okay.”

As the words left the dogs mouth, there was an explosion, and the air seemed to fill with a pulsing energy. Dib ran up the stairs, stripping and skittering up them to check on Zim. He made to yell, but it came out as more of a croak when he spotted Zim floating above the bed, pack lit a bright green, and his body covered in a tan and darker outfit, with a dark green  _ tiara _ of all things plastered to the irkens pale-green face. 

Then Zim landed, and his ruby eyes opened, fixing on Dib. 

The human launched himself at Zim, wrapping him in a tight hug as he tried to will the tears back down. He wouldn’t cry again. 

“Eh?” The alien screamed. “Dib thing? Get off of me!”

“Shut up,” Dib sniffed. 

There was a pause as Zim noticed his… shorts. “What is Zim  _ wearing _ ?!?”

Dib laughed as tears spilled down his face, and he held onto the irken. 


End file.
